E2: Flink Twice if you Want to Form a Works Council

Generally, the enforcement of legal labour standards such as the maximum limits on working time, the minimum limits on wages, and the minimum health and safety conditions at the workplace, is the job of the state. Systems of labour inspection and labour courts in their turn however, rely on the vigilance and courage of workers.

 

In the Delivery Charge podcast, host Aju John explores how platform delivery workers are organising for fairer conditions of work in India where he is from, and in Germany, where he lives. In the first episode, we learnt about Gorillas, a startup company that promised to deliver groceries quicker that it would take someone to visit the supermarket for the same purchases. It became the fastest European company to become a unicorn, but was accused of doing so at the cost of disrespecting German labour law and the rights of its workers, most of whom were recent migrants to Berlin. Some of them, dissatisfied with their conditions of work, organised themselves into the Gorillas Workers Collective. After a campaign that lasted several months, and despite the legal hurdles placed in their way, this group conducted Berlin-wide elections in November 2021, at which some among them were elected to the Betriebsrat (or Works Council).

 

The story did not end with the election of a Gorillas Betriebsrat for Berlin. The company restructured and separated its German subsidiary into multiple entities. In response, the members of the Betriebsrat that was elected in November 2021 decided that in the company’s new segmented structure, it was important to establish works councils at the level of individual warehouses. A year after the first election, workers in the warehouses at the Friedenau and Treptow districts of Berlin elected their respective works councils. Among those elected from Friedenau were Maria Coelho and Jose Silva. Listen to their stories on this episode.

 

In between the Gorillas elections of November 2021 and December 2021, Betriebsrat elections also took place at Flink and Lieferando. The former, like Gorillas, is an "instant delivery" business that operates through a network of warehouses in city neighbourhoods. The latter delivers cooked food from restaurants and so-called dark kitchens. Both these companies have also been accused of pursuing extraordinary growth even as they are unable to meet basic labour standards.

On this episode of the Delivery Charge podcast, you can also listen to Rob and Mo, who were pivotal in the campaigns to establish the Betriebsrats at these companies. In doing so, we will learn a bit more about the institution of the Betriebsrat in German labour law, with some help from Dr. Eva Kocher, a professor of law at Centre for Interdisciplinary Labour Law Studies at the European University in Frankfurt (Oder).